I came down today to find my parents watching the final 40-minutes-or-so of a (supposedly) new Tamil movie they were showing on Astro Vaanavil. The main character was some scrawny-looking guy who doesn’t seem to have an affinity for shaving. The scene was at a restaurant where he and his close friend were in a drunken stupor, disturbing and generally pissing off people. I didn’t need to wait long to find out why: his girlfriend dumped him. Boo-frickin’-hoo. I see, so that would warrant getting piss-drunk and making other people’s lives a living hell. He then proceeded to climb up to the roof of a building and shouting to the whole world that he was going to have his brain matter splattered all over the floor because he putus cinta.

I’m going, “What the hell la?”

He goes on spewing some bullshit about how you shouldn’t trust girls, how guys should marry their girlfriends as soon as they profess their “I Love You”s so they don’t cheat you, how you should have a written contract so she doesn’t cheat on you… you get the picture. Someone called the police, they came, more bullshit by the main character along the lines that I told earlier. But my favourite scene was after all these happened. The chief inspector (or something… kira pangkat tinggi la!) took out his gun, pointed it at him, and said “You don’t have to jump. I’ll kill you myself.” I almost choked on my coffee. This scrawny-looking unshaven fellow is dragged to the police station where his ass is ceremoniously kicked, with the police officers saying something along the lines of “You main cintan-cintan, then when it fails, you try to kill yourselves, and we have to waste our damn time pujuk idiots like you not to do it!”

I won’t continue further. I hope you get the picture by now. These are the types of movies that are coming from India nowadays. Movies that literally worship love over everything else in life. Movies with dance scenes that are just plain disgusting. Movies that use the same tired cliché, the same formulaic plot, the same actors acting with the same style. To be honest, it’s just plain hard to find a Tamil movie that places a genuine emphasis on telling a good story rather than spending money on exotic locales or crappy CGI. There are attempts to make something different, but I’ve learnt time and time again that no matter how good it might look, be prepared for disappointment.

I’m not saying that there aren’t any good Tamil movies coming out from Tamil Nadu. Trust me, if you care to look around a bit, you’ll find some truly stunning gems. I’ve had the privilege and the opportunity to watch some truly remarkable pieces of film-making that I would have otherwise missed if not for the coercion of relatives. Unfortunately, these movies are the ones that have a high chance of flopping at the box-office. And yet, these movies somehow still manage to be made, even though the majority of Tamil movie audiences give the cold shoulder.

Movies like Kutty, for example. I’m not sure if anybody has heard of this movie at all. I don’t even think it even came to Malaysian cinemas. I managed to catch it a couple of years ago, all the way back, when ntv7 celebrated it’s first ever Deepavali. This was a very lightly-publicized movie. I think it might have been an art-house movie, because it had no songs, no stupid-ass comedy scenes, and no-one famous in it. But it had a well-written story, one that I cannot forget even until now. A poor girl from the slums of about 11 or 12 is taken to the city by a Good Samaritan and given a job as a maid in her house. Child labour is unfortunately a common thing there. So, anyway, she becomes a maid in that house, and is almost immediately ostracized, bullied, abused and insulted by the other occupants of the house.

Why? One, she is of a lower caste. Two, she is illiterate. Three, she is poor. It became apparent during the 120-minute duration of the movie that the so-called higher-class, educated people were acting like narrow-minded dumbfucks and the illiterate girl was the only one who had a sane mind and a sound heart. The movie ends like this: Kutty couldn’t stand the abuse. She decides to run away to her poor mother all the way in the slums. But she is illiterate. Therefore, she is gullible. Men come to her, promising her safe passage home. Men with dark intentions. Instead, she boards a train to somewhere else. A place where there are other plans for her.

It would not be far-fetched to guess that she would end up being a labourer or a child prostitute. But the one thing that kept me thinking about it for days and days, was the last scene. We know what would happen to Kutty, and yet the last scene was of Kutty smiling contentedly. It just pauses at the exact moment she smiles, as if somehow forcing us to look at the future of this girl, and not turn away. She wholeheartedly believes that those men will take her back to her mother. But that’s how it ends. No happy ending. No manufactured closure. Just a piece of cold, hard reality. Solidly written, perfectly executed. Something to think about. And yet movies like these will continue to be ignored, while crap like the movie I described earlier will be lapped up by the general public. Cliché after cliché after cliché.

And for saying all this, I am sometimes labeled as a pretender. As a person who is “embarassed to be an Indian.” As someone who is not proud of his people’s heritage and his people’s culture. Tell me, at what point in time did part of our culture include vulgar jokes, disgusting dances, hero-worshipping and the like? I’m not kidding, people. Some dance scenes from some of the newer Tamil movies are just downright nasty. And the subject of love is almost always shown as an element that is so pure, so ethereal, that nothing else matters. Education and the basic need to better ourselves are nothing compared to the unadulterated, sacred notion of love. Parents are shown as narrow-minded fools who never seem to understand the purity of love.

Don’t make me fucking laugh. Love ain’t everything.

I don’t hate Tamil movies. I hate crap disguised as Tamil movies.

P.S: What do you think? Give me your comments. I would love to know what you think. All comments welcome, but make sure they’re comprehensible. Gimme your two cents’ worth.